Clarity’s 2015 Holiday Tech Gift Giving Guide

Welcome to Clarity’s 2015 Holiday Tech Giving Guide. It’s our first ever, and hopefully now annual, recommendations on sweet gifts to surprise your family, friends, colleagues, or clients with for the holidays. Apologies to our friends that celebrate Hanukkah as we know we’re not giving you much time to act!

Here are products, gadgets, and more that our employees will be giving, receiving (fingers crossed), or buying for themselves this holiday season. Broken into categories by cost.

Enjoy!

STOCKING STUFFERS (under $20)

ThruNite Mini Key Chain: Need something to brighten your evening? This tiny flashlight that only needs a single AAA battery will disappear into your pocket, but provide 120 lumens of light if needed — plenty to light up whatever task is at hand! As a bonus, it has low-light mode where it can put out just enough light to see for over 100 hours on a single battery.

Anker Portable Tablet/Phone Stand: Great stand for phones and tablets that’s small enough to travel with and cheap enough to keep a couple at different places around the house. It can support tablets up to 10 inches.

Fisher Space Pen: This pen is less than 4 inches long when closed. It’s a slick, smooth black pen that combines easy curves with a pressurized ink cartridge that writes in any orientation. The ultimate EDC pen.

“Turing’s Cathedral”: A great read about John Von Neumann and how some of the first computers came together at Los Alamos and Princeton. Highlights include the question of how you build a reliable machine from unreliable parts and some great color plates of Albert Einstein and Kurt Gödel strolling across the lawn like it was just a basic day.

“Perfectly Coded Nails”: Part of a Clarity #shipdays effort, communicates the power of coding to young girls in a language many of them speak: painting nails. All proceeds go to charity. Available on Kindle as well. #GIRLSCANCODE

Particle Photon: A $20 device that has on-board Wi-Fi, a slick online IDE that pushes updates out over the cloud, and tons of pre-buildt packages. By far the easiest microcontroller I’ve found to develop for and get into production.

$20 TO $75

Anker Astro E4: A battery that can fully recharge 2–3 phones and is small, light, and under $30.

3 Squares 20-Cup Rice Cooker: Think you know how to make good rice on the stove? So did I — then I tried making it in a rice cooker. This thing makes rice easier, faster, and fluffier than any I’ve ever made on the stove — and it doubles as a crock pot and oatmeal cooker!

iFixit All-new Pro Tech Toolkit: Contains all the poking, prying, gripping, lifting, ESD safety, and screw driving tools needed to service consumer electronics.

ABOVE $75

Nixie Clock Kits: Is there a tinkerer or maker in the house?

Breville One-Touch Tea Maker: If you drink tea (and if you don’t, you should; it’s sort of like coffee with vitamins), I’d highly recommend a Breville variable temp electric kettle. It’ll change your life (and burn your palate less!). Tea still not your thing? Works great for mac-and-cheese and ramen, too. French press. And foot baths. And hot dogs. And H.B.E.s. (pro tip: change the water after the foot bath)

Shure Sound Isolating Earphones: Looking for the ultimate in-ear headphones? Shure’s entry-level on-stage monitors make fantastic eardbuds. The driver is designed for the demanding requirements of live audio, so music comes through crystal clear, the cable wraps over to ensure they stay in place, and they have unparalleled external sound rejection. As a bonus, the external is flush with your ear — so earmuffs won’t push them into your ear uncomfortable like many earbuds can. Also, the cable is replicable, so a torn cable won’t necessitate a repurchase.

Top Greener USB Outlet: Get ride of the wall warts around you house and plug your devices straight into the wall to charge. The Top Greener fits a standard outlet opening and allows access to the USB ports and the standard 3-prong plugs at the same time.

Hue Bloom: Great way to add some color to your desk/office. Point the lights at a wall and set the color you like using the Hue app.

DJI Osmo: Three-axis stabilized gimbal with a 4K camera for under $700. The Osmo uses the same camera DJI puts on its high-end drones and takes amazing 4K footage with the gimbal keeping the camera perfectly still even as you are moving.

SONOS: Hate having to pause a movie or miss something on TV when you take a refreshment or restroom break? Combine the PLAY:5 flagship in your TV room with a PLAY:3 speaker in the kitchen and a PLAY:1 in the bathroom — you’ll hear every word no matter where you go. As a bonus, the SONOS app can tune each individual speaker for the room it’s in to compensate for rooms not designed with audio in mind.

ASUS Portable Monitor: A 15.6" full HD, USB powered portable monitor. It’s lightweight which make it the perfect complement for those who carry their laptop/surface/mac everywhere.

Pebble Time Round: Perfect watch for those that want smartwatch functionality without the smartwatch look.

DESIGNERS’ CHOICE

IWANTDIS: Our designers couldn’t narrow it down to a single product recommendation. Instead, they’ll point you to IWANTDIS when you’re needing to buy gifts for your aesthetically-sensitive friends.